PODUNK COPS CAN'T POLICE, BUT THEY'RE WORKING THE MEDIA LIKE SEASONED GOP OPERATIVES

Keeping the peace in a moment of great unrest is clearly a job skill the local cops in Ferguson, Missouri, lack, but someone in the pro-cop community in or around Ferguson clearly has rather sophisticated wingnuttish propaganda skills. We know this in part because someone knew enough to spoon-fed this story to Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft, who's called the Stupidest Man on the Internet by everyone on the left even though he's made his blog into a widely read conduit for questionable stories the "respectable" right-wing press doesn't want to report but is all too happy to retransmit:

BREAKING REPORT: Officer Darren Wilson Suffered "Orbital Blowout Fracture to Eye Socket" During Mike Brown Attack

The Gateway Pundit can now confirm from two local St. Louis sources that police Officer Darren Wilson suffered facial fractures during his confrontation with deceased 18 year-old Michael Brown....

Local St. Louis sources said Wilson suffered an "orbital blowout fracture to the eye socket." This comes from a source within the Prosecuting Attorney's office and confirmed by the St. Louis County Police....

As Charles Johnson notes at Little Green Footballs, Wilson is seen in a witness's post-shooting video displaying none of the likely symptoms of this kind of injury, and he didn't leave the scene to get medical attention. Johnson also notes that Hoft illustrates his post with an X-ray of this kind of injury on which the label "UNIV OF IOWA ETC-CT" has been crudely obscured -- no, it's not an X-ray of Wilson, but you're clearly supposed to think it is.

Prior to this, another dubious story mde its way up the media food chain:

Yesterday [Monday], the controversy surrounding the conflicting stories of Michael Brown's death grew hotter, when Christine Byers, a police reporter with the St. Louis Dispatch tweeted the following information about officer Darren Wilson:

Police sources tell me more than a dozen witnesses have corroborated cop's version of events in shooting #Ferguson

— Christine Byers (@ChristineDByers) August 19, 2014

But she backtracked, tweeting this semi-retraction hours later:

On FMLA from paper. Earlier tweets did not meet standards for publication.

— Christine Byers (@ChristineDByers) August 19, 2014

Yeah, she was spreading this tale even though she's not reporting this story, or any other story -- she's taking a Family and Medical Leave Act leave from her job. But her rumormongering also spread like wildfire -- thanks to sites like The Blaze and (again) Gateway Pundit.

Is local law enforcement just tilting the story the way law enforcement always does with local media, but the result this time is that right-wing propagandists with a national base are listening? Or does someone in this process actually grasp how the right-wing puke funnel works? It's probably the former, but the result is the same either way: rumors and disinformation, once they're out there, get enshrined as fact on the right, and that colors the story for all of Heartland America -- and, by the way, for any potential Darren Wilson jurors. Whatever's going on, it's clear that the other side always work the media more skillfully.

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UPDATE: More here.